Younger Employees Main Culprits for Cybersecurity Breaches

Younger Employees Main Culprits for Cybersecurity Breaches

20th Jun 14:20

A study has shown more than a third of senior executives believe younger employees are the main culprits for data security breaches in the workplace.

However the same decision makers are doing very little to allay their own fears with more than a third of 18 to 24 year olds able to access any files on the company network and less than half have access only to the files that are relevant to their work.

These are the main findings of an independent study into attitudes to security of the next generation workforce, commissioned by security firm Centrify.

The study, conducted by Censuswide, sought the views of 1,000 next generation workers (18-24 year olds) and 500 decision makers in UK organisations.

The study examines how security, privacy and online behaviour at work impacts the lives of younger employees and the companies that they work for.

Password sharing tops the list of what keeps decision makers awake at night (56%), but 29% of younger workers reveal that they are in the driving seat when it comes to password changes, with their employers leaving it to them to decide when they need a password change. Furthermore 15% admit to sharing passwords with colleagues.

These concerns appear well founded with one in five workers saying they are not bothered about how their social media activity might affect their employers and 18% admitting that their posts could compromise employers’ security and privacy policies.

However, less than half say their company has social media guidelines in place, highlighting the need for strong social media access controls that follow the principles of a zero-trust approach to security, which assumes that users inside a network are no more trustworthy than those outside the network.